Friday, April 03, 2009

Sham Blog

America Rolls Up Its Sleeves!NYT: “…Michelle Obama, during the meeting with the queen, touched her, raising already high-brows over on this side of the pond. Buckingham Palace protocol says that commoners must not touch the queen, a dictate that foreign leaders in the past have ignored at their own peril. When Prime Minister Paul Keating of Australia did the same thing back in 1992 the newspapers here called him the ‘Lizard of Oz.’

“But so high is the adulation that has been heaped on the Obamas from the normally caustic British press since their arrival that newspapers here said it was a sign of how well Mrs. Obama got along with the queen. In Mrs. Obama’s defense, the queen did touch her first, putting her arm around her as the two looked down at their feet, presumably talking about shoes.”

Where there are shoes, there also peace shall dwell.

Behind the Scenes at Google!Designer Douglas Bowman, in his blog, telling readers why he left Google:“Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that.”

Bowman now works for Twitter, which is pretty much design-free, near as I can tell, except for the Fail Whale. And word is that Google might buy Twitter. Which will probably mean a redesign of the Fail Whale, which will take months.

Mac Users Whiners! Hold Front Page!From Good Morning Silicon Valley:“ Now in heavy prime-time rotation, the initial installment of the "Laptop Hunters" ads features vivacious Lauren, who was recruited for what she believed was generic market research into laptop purchases, given a $1,000 budget, and turned loose to shop for a laptop that met her needs — in this case, something reasonably speedy with a 17-inch screen and a comfortable keyboard. Followed by a camera crew, Lauren makes a quick U-turn out of an Apple store after determining that the only Mac portable in her price range had a 13-inch screen. Later, at a Best Buy, Lauren bounces through a bountiful selection of Windows-based machines before picking an HP Pavilion for $699 and declaring, ‘I'm a PC and I got just what I wanted.’ And the money quote? In the car between stores, Lauren sighs in mock resignation, ‘I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person.’”

“Well, you could practically hear the Mac hackles going up every time the commercial ran, and the fan sites quickly filled with indignation. … Doubts were raised over Lauren's veracity because she's an aspiring actress and her credibility as a bargain hunter because she's driving a nice Volkswagen. Still frames from the ad were analyzed like the Zapruder film for evidence of deceptive editing. And the machine that made Lauren so happy was derided as ‘a piece of crap’ and ‘the epitome of what people dislike about PCs.’ Throw in the ‘not cool enough’ line, says Technologizer's Ed Oswald, and the ad goes from misleading to ‘offensive.’”

Another Golden Idol Tarnished.The Sham Wow Guy had a dust up with a hooker in Miami hotel. Sharing a kiss, she clamped down on his tongue (allegedly) with her teeth, causing him to hit her to make her let go. Bleeding, he stumbled down to the lobby. Authorities were summoned. According to The Smoking Gun, the police reported: "Both parties had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from their persons.”

Why I Love Wikipedia.“The Lloyds Bank coprolite is a large human coprolite, or fossilized dung specimen, recovered by archaeologists excavating the Viking settlement of Jórvík (now York) in England. It was found in 1972 beneath the site of what was to become the York branch of Lloyds Bank and may be the largest example of fossilised human feces ever found.”

From a Christian Mommy Blog: No More Kids!“I didn't want to impose the goat character upon my children. Our children should be different from the children of the world, anyway. I therefore made an effort to stop using the word 'kids'. Now I find that it grates upon me when I hear it.”

Elsewhere, she compares (at great length) goats and sheep. She writes, citing the Bible, “When God visits His flock, he will separate the sheep from the goats and punish the goats!” And “Goats by nature are independent, proud, rebellious, destructive and yet cowardly in the face of danger.” And “…[T]he goats would herd their young together in one spot on a knoll of a hill and leave them while they went off to forage for the day. They did not provide the same individual attention which the sheep gave to their offspring.”

Whatever. You lambs stay off my lawn!

Health Alert! Cleveland Plain Dealer. “It has become LeBron James' trademark. Just before tipoff, he leans over the courtside scorers' table, pours a pile of powder on his hands and then -- poof! -- throws it skyward as if filling the arena with a cloud of magic dust.”…“Dr. Kathleen Fagan, an environmental health expert at Case Western Reserve University, wants the Cavaliers superstar to take a powder from the pregame ritual. She fears kids at home will mimic him, create cumulus clouds of their own and then inhale the dust. ‘It's not a good idea to throw powder up in the air and breathe it in,’ said Fagan, who's also an assistant professor at Case's medical school. The particles can irritate the lungs, eyes and nose, she added.”

Think of it. Throngs of children making cumulus clouds of powder, infecting their little lungs, and placing a thin sheen of white dust on the dining room furniture. Sounds more kidlike than lamblike, but again- whatever. You lambs stay off my lawn!

Things You Didn’t Know About Bobby Jindal.Max Blumenthal, in The Daily Beast: “When he was four years old, Piyush changed his name to "Bobby" after becoming mesmerized by an episode of The Brady Bunch.” He converted to Catholicism as a teenager. When he was in college, performed an exorcism on his girlfriend. The demon was successfully driven out, by the way.

I Had a Dream!I was standing in a driveway. A little fat dog waddled up to me with a red ball in its mouth, and dropped it at my feet. Then I woke up.